How to handle your Bad Restaurant Reviews for your Restaurant?
Criticism can be a difficult thing to take. It can harm us. It may make us feel uncomfortable. But it also offers a great opportunity for learning and growth.
If you experience a bad restaurant update, your first reaction might be to panic – or fight back. Take a deep breath, because your feedback is important. Properly answered, it may reduce the negative reaction – or encourage the host to give your restaurant another chance. But most importantly, you can use a negative review to improve your restaurant in a realistic, realistic, and effective way.
If you get a bad update, it is far from the end of the world. First, you need to respond to the review in a way that helps reduce the negative customer feeling. Then, you need to use that review to gather data on what your restaurant can do better – and how. Here’s what you need to know about how to respond to updates from bad restaurants in the right way.
Especially in the digital age, negative reviews can be very harmful to your restaurant in many ways:
New customers may avoid your restaurant. Studies have shown that just one negative review can cause up to 22 percent of new customers to flee your restaurant. With three negative reviews, that rises to 59 percent for potential new visitors. Four negative reviews can drive up to 70 percent of potential customers. This can be especially dangerous in a new restaurant. Businesses that get a lot of negative reviews, especially early on, may not be able to succeed unless they reproduce – but still, there is no guarantee of overcoming that bad idea first.
Income may decrease. Having too many bad updates can cost businesses – including restaurant – sales. A LSA Insider study showed that businesses with a star rating of 1-1.5 on popular review sites have a profit of 33 percent lower than average.
Your SEO can have an impact. Customer reviews are one of the many things Google considers when checking search results. That means that if your restaurant has bad reviews, it may not show up in keyword search results, which may prevent new visitors from finding your restaurant.
Visitors may question their trust and loyalty to your product. Forbes’ article found that about 50 percent of customers question the quality of a business after reading negative reviews about it – even if they haven’t heard it correctly.
1. Respond quickly.
As a restaurant owner or manager, you should check out Yelp, Tripadvisor, social media, and other restaurant review sites regularly to view negative reviews. If you see a negative review, it is important to respond immediately (but not so quickly as to respond angrily or emotionally). Ideally, try to respond to a negative review within 2-3 days.
2. Be an expert.
When responding to a negative review, all the time and all the interaction is important as you try to re-create a negative visitor’s impression of your restaurant. That’s why, when replying, it’s important to be professional – respectful, friendly, and apologetic – and to use the correct grammar and punctuation in your response.
3. Do not take the update yourself.
Most of the time, a bad review reflects the visitor’s confidence in the restaurant. It’s not about you as a person (unless they had a bad relationship with you while they were at the restaurant, but that might indicate a bigger problem than a bad review). It’s important to keep the big picture in mind, and don’t take negative reviews as a restaurant.
4. Say “Thank You” and “I'm Sorry”
No matter what your review says, make sure you achieve two very important points: Thank the visitor for trying your restaurant and apologize for the inconvenience. We will go into more detail on how to write an effective response to negative reviews later in this article, but here are two phrases you should not be afraid to mention.
5. Take responsibility
In the same way, it is important to be aware of when your restaurant brings down the visitor, and you are committed to failure. A positive response to negative reviews should be humility and apology. It should address the problem, not shift the burden or make excuses.
6. Do not get self-defense
Yelp star reviews may feel awkward – like looking down rather than constructive criticism. But it’s important to remember that a bad review isn’t the New York Times restaurant review section – the real experience shared by your real restaurant guests. No matter how bad the update may be, you can protect yourself from it. Instead, be humble and helpful, and keep your voice friendly as you try to find a solution
7. Be personal
When you respond to a review, do it for yourself, not as your restaurant name. Instead of saying something like, “We at Mama G’s Homestyle Italian apologize,” we made a personal statement by saying, “My name is Geraldine and I am the owner of Mama G’s Homestyle Italian. I want to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused to our restaurant experience. ”
8. Invite guests again to try your restaurant again
Lastly, if you respond to a negative review, be sure to invite the visitor to try your restaurant again (and consider giving it a reason to do so, such as a discounted ticket or free item). This is especially important as restaurants restaurants are still reeling from the effects of the epidemic, which has created a number of unexpected new challenges, from the huge increase in recruitment and service delivery to unprecedented staff shortages.